The leadership of the California-based private company Sandvine told employees in a discussion that it has been supplying Belarusian state organisations with internet-filtering equipment for more than a year. The recording of the conversation obtained by Bloomberg.
The chief technology officer of Sandvine, Alexander Havanga, acknowledged that Belarus could use the company’s technology to block websites and messaging apps. He said that Sandvine concluded that the internet and access to specific sites is not a ‘human right’.
“Every sovereign country should be allowed to pursue its own policy as to what is allowed and what is not allowed in that country,” the publication quotes Alexander Havanga.
The Sandvine staff were threatened with dismissal for public comments about the situation. Senior management proposed resolving all questions within internal discussions.
Bloomberg first reported the use of Sandvine’s technology to block the internet in Belarus at the end of August 2020. At that time, staff expressed concerns about damage to the company’s reputation.
According to the publication, a demonstration of the equipment’s capabilities to Belarusian authorities took place in May 2020. The supplier was the Russian company “Infosystems Jet,” which signed a contract with Belarus in 2019 for $2.5 million.
Sandvine equipment is installed in two locations in Minsk. Through it, the National Centre for Traffic Exchange (NCOT) manages internet activity in the country. The equipment can block 40% of all inbound and outbound internet traffic in the country and can blacklist up to 150 million URLs, Bloomberg notes.
As noted, on 9 August, the main day of the Belarus presidential election, internet outages were recorded across the country. The authorities attributed the problems to foreign interference and DDoS attacks.
Experts said the traffic was suppressed by state monopolies — ‘Beltelecom’ and NCOT.
The lost economic activity resulting from the internet shutdown in Belarus was estimated at more than $56 million a day.
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